"rattling" poems
The napalan man in a violet cape
descended the stair with a lopsided gait
a wretched procession, subscribers in cue
rattling off as they stream from the pew
sounds and smells from a shadowy place
a catholic priest to gin up base
lanterns strung from bolted doors
cobbled streets and wooden floors
stepping stones and iron bell
fortified by the citadel
hallowed halls and sepulcher
dragon cane for the horse drawn tour
castle turret, archer holes
centaur scribed in chamber bowls
garden columns in courtyard view
the blood ballet and hullabaloo
ancient tombs on warrior grounds
gods and saints who made their rounds
goliath still with battered scythe
knelt in prayer and mummified
battle fires and crowds that roar
gallows, caves, abysmal war
gargoyles flock the terraced slope
pearly gates to bring on hope
serpents, snakes and burning ash
lava bombs and trident clash
mariners drift in absentee
as neptune rises from the Tyrrhenian Sea
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
They look out from the terrace.
At the borders of sight
live rocky hills behind brown
and golden and olive crop
under a cloudless sky.
BANG!
An artificial cloud.
“Mira,” she points, “Venga!”
They fly down stairs,
diving like sparrows
into the street.
Boys sprint across pavements and climb;
men vault over fences in time
for news to reach ears.
"¡Ya vienen!"
Excitement and fear.
The rattling of cow bells
and galloping nears.
Men bait and dodge horns
and escape through doors
and up and over
red wooden bars.
Sticks beat on the concrete ground
and closer, louder, gallops sound.
Seconds away –
until the last,
he side steps into a house;
indoors,
apart,
he runs through the foyer
and up the stairs
around a corner
with long strides
too fast to follow.
She chooses left and
sings soprano
when doors won't budge
and
it
crashes
in.
She turns and the fear is paralysing.
"FERMIN!"
"FERMIN!"
"FERMIN!"
He hurdles the stairs
and explodes
but it rams her
to and fro,
thrashing her head
against the wall
where horns
sin and gore
cement and brick.
He clasps the tail
and heaves its hide from
side to side as
hooves smash
crates of wine -
they slip and slide
in fractured glass;
he finds a horn
and yanks the head!
He's yanked instead
near dead before the men
arrive down stairs
to punch and kick it;
strike and stick it
smack and hit it;
'til it
fits and quits
and flees the foyer,
fast and frantic,
flying flustered
by the frenzy,
finally finding
pattering
paves
it
peters
off
down
the
street.
"¿Que ha pasado?
¿Quien ha sido?
¡El Balbotin
y la Chicha!
¡Que una vaca
les ha pillado!"
"¿Estas bien?"
Dizzy she's there
with searching hands
and scolding.
"Podria haber sido peor"
Apr 25, 2018
Apr 25, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
My mother should be an author
She carves her soul into millions of pieces
Leaving it behind all of the family photos
When I see my mother
I see a woman
Who wants to hide her soul in a needle
Just so the screaming can stop in her mind,
These bottles are rattling in the living room
You see they have put shackles on her heart,
She can't love anymore
Without having ***** in her water bottle.
Where is she hiding her beer?
I feel like my mother is giving me a scavenger hunt
From the shards of glass that were left on the baseball fields
My mother used to take me to.
You know she always wasn't like this
She was strong minded and had a big heart
Tonight I will tell you the story of a woman
Who lost her soul to the Keystones to the Miller Lites
To the ****** Mary’s.
Let's rewind time
See how to **** the soul in ten years
10- I look into my mother's eyes and I start to cry
Because I'm looking at a woman who I don't know anymore
9- I refused to bail her out of jail again
Because I'm afraid her kidney will fail if she drinks again
8- My mother staggered into the theater and disrupted the whole play,
My cast mates turned to me and asked, isn't that your mother?
7- I had to hold my mothers hand
Because she was throwing up the cocktail of drugs and alcohol
6- Daddy had to get mom out of jail she was drinking again
5- My mother throws the bottle across the room
And told me the reason why she drinks is because I'm Autistic
4- My mother overslept for my piano recital,
I didn't think it was a big deal
But I remember she spent the whole night crying
With a wine glass in her hand.
3- Mommy I didn't know your prescription came in a needle
2- Mommy the prescription say 2 pills a day
why are you taking 6?
1- My mother went to the doctor
Found out that she has Rheumatoid Arthritis
I don't know what that means,
But I know she will still be strong right?
0- She took me to a Dodger game for my birthday.
I remember Sammy Sosa hitting a home run that game
She told me that the only person that can **** your soul is yourself
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 12:16 AM UTC
.
I’m just a lonely traveler
on this earth
Sometimes it feels as if I'm
waiting for the sky to fall
with each passing breathe
of wind
Standing alone,
a windswept tree
leans downwind;
conspicuously wrought,
naked and bowed
by the grinding
silent forces
at nature's whim
Rootless tumbleweeds
roll by randomly:
broken off,
spinning clockwise,
never looking back,
timeworn and tired
of resisting the prevailing
high desert wind
and its unheld temper
Rattling the tinder
dry sagebrush
like songless wind-chimes;
voiceless fugitives
wreathing a bellowing silence
Jesse Stillwater
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 7:04 PM UTC
The secret, I guess, was to always be brave;
No matter what you see, think or hear.
There are landmines carefully fitted along the road,
Rattling to its joints and ready to explode.
And before the truth of the situation blows you away,
Before you get knocked off your feet and get thrown in the air,
Before searing pain engulfs your numbness,
Just before you cut the trip wire;
You shout it out, no louder than the softest whisper, “Be Brave.”
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 12:50 PM UTC
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down, a local constellation,
Toward their admirers in the tabletop:
Mobs of eyeballs looking up.
Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---
Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?
The red geraniums I know.
Friends, friends. They stink of armpits
And the invovled maladies of autumn,
Musky as a lovebed the morning after.
My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.
Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.
They tow old water thick as fog.
The roses in the Toby jug
Gave up the ghost last night. High time.
Their yellow corsets were ready to split.
You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,
Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.
You should have junked them before they died.
Daybreak discovered the bureau lid
Littered with Chinese hands. Now I'm stared at
By chrysanthemums the size
Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same
Magenta as this fubsy sofa.
In the mirror their doubles back them up.
Listen: your tenant mice
Are rattling the ******* packets. Fine flour
Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.
And you doze on, nose to the wall.
This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.
How did we make it up to your attic?
You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.
We slept like stones. Lady, what am I doing
With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,
Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?
14.7k
Passion is blue,
Passion sounds like medicine rattling in a pill bottle,
Passion feels like my soul burning burning up with the most violent flame.
Passion looks like strobe lights seen through closed eyes,
It tastes like body fluids mixed with your love.
It smells like your t-shirt.
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 8:15 AM UTC
I didn't get mail today,
The postman didn't call,
No letter box rattling,
No letters in the hall,
No dinner reservations,
No flights to Istanbul,
No romantic entanglement,
Valentine's day’s so cruel.
Feb 14, 2015
Feb 14, 2015 at 5:11 PM UTC
I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.
the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.
finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
**** on them.
now I work for the editors the readers the
critics
but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.
11.2k
I am alive by luck at this point.
I wonder if the gun that will eventually take me has been made.
Whose trigger will bury me.
How many bullets, like a flock of sparrows, will come carry my life to its final bed.
Today, I am alive but there is no law to thank.
If not me, then someone else.
Born into a game of chance we never asked for. Traded diplomas for obituaries. Traded graduation speeches for eulogies. Traded futures for an early grave. Forced to cash in their chips. We don’t want to play anymore.
And this too is eulogy. And this too is prayer. And this too can resurrect the coffin wood back to a tree. Can sing back alive whatever parts of you died with them. Whatever leapt in your throat at yet another headline.
Mourning until you, too, are a thing to mourn.
But we will no longer be martyrs.
We are the rude awakening to politicians who pawned out our safety, who bartered our lives for bribes.
You say “gun reform is not the answer” but all I can see is a bullet rattling like a pinball in an innocent student’s jaw.
You smell like gun smoke and
I can see the AR15 you're holding behind your back and
I guess it's easy to crack jokes about dodging bullets when you're the one firing them.
Give teachers books not bullets:
Kafka isn’t kevlar.
Bronte isn’t bulletproof.
And how sick is it that we must add school shootings to your list of proud american traditions.
Throwing opinions like punches.
How many more have to die before you decide your ego isn’t as important as you think it is?
And I, too, am buried alive
My soggy grave parting its greedy lips.
To you, my bones, when ground into gunpowder and mixed into water, taste like champagne.
My pulse, as thin as an obituary panting beneath sweaty palms, and sure
We are “just kids,”
But you are forgetting we are the next generation
And you autopsy your fists.
Call it reclamatory.
Lately, when asked “how are you?” I respond with a name no longer living.
And who knows if mine will be next
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 10:32 PM UTC
The thing, he said, would come in the night at three
From the old churchyard on the hill below;
But crouching by an oak fire's wholesome glow,
I tried to tell myself it could not be.
Surely, I mused, it was pleasantry
Devised by one who did not truly know
The Elder Sign, bequeathed from long ago,
That sets the fumbling forms of darkness free.
He had not meant it - no - but still I lit
Another lamp as starry Leo climbed
Out of the Seekonk, and a steeple chimed
Three - and the firelight faded, bit by bit.
Then at the door that cautious rattling came -
And the mad truth devoured me like a flame!
10.4k
As a bisexual, I fear
Few will want you to be proud.
They will bend your ear
Saying things to you out loud
That would be better left
Totally, embarrassingly unsaid
Instead of rattling around
Inside the cathedral of your head.
Too many try to make it
Seem like a kind of venal crime
To want to make love with
Someone of your own kind
And maybe with the same
Gender with which you were born.
To some it is very biblical
And subjects you to public scorn.
Finding someone ****
With the same plumbing as you
It not only delightful
It can be a dream come true.
It feels correctly natural
And works like the other way
Even though people scorn
And use words like *** and ‘gay’
Or ****** and even taco
Whatever that might end up meaning.
The important thing to me
Bisexuality is so powerfully appealing.
So, those who dislike me
And feel so righteously zealous
That bisexuality is wrong
Are very possibly just jealous.
Or maybe just uptight
Living by someone’s else’s rules;
Not what they’ve learned
And therefore are bigoted fools.
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 10:57 PM UTC
♦ ♦ ♦
She was an earnest devotée.
Her ideals, birthed in Chardonnay
were globally diverse (read: white).
A liberal bark preceded bite.
Her crystal clearer than her vision;
she provoked bemused derision
as she breathed intolerance
toward all who would not dance her dance.
She swooned for distant pagan tribes,
attuned to their exotic vibes –
rapt in multi-culti piety
strangely deaf to her own society,
judged by her as abomination;
unredeemed. The background station
always stuck on N.P.R.
(the soundtrack of her culture war,
Pacifica News and Democracy Nows,
and other progressive holy cows)
Her motherland a shameful mystery:
guilty first, and void of history –
its origins defiled, corrupted…
while she enjoyed uninterrupted
freedom to pursue her whims:
misguided one-world global hymns.
The sisterhood of hu(man) kind
was foremost in her earnest mind –
even should that same sisterhood
be sealed by her well-meaning blood.
Out on a date with global death
she hoped to unify the earth
in solidarity with causes
led by killers, warlord bosses,
thugs she never knew existed
who, if she’d met she’d have resisted.
Her theory landed far from her praxis
spun, by default, on an evil axis.
Hot with zeal she fumed and stormed
quite certain she was well-informed,
at benefits, non-profit functions
rallies, boycotts, left-wing luncheons;
warm with righteous spite for Israel,
aiding and abetting Ishmael
with fellow-travelers, like-minded
similarly hateful, blinded,
rattling sabers, scimitars, axes…
(lunacy never wanes, but waxes
hotter with the passing years
as activists confront their fears).
She finally shilled for the Intifada
(stopping short of reciting Shahada),
reaching out to the terrorist
with righteous raised progressive fist…
offering thus her neck to blade:
collateral to be repaid
by murderers who couldn’t care less
about her open-mindedness.
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 9:57 PM UTC
Somewhere in the sea of turquoise
I was lost in a boat made of my dreams
If you ever wanted to find me
Then I’d be hiding in the hollow shadows of the free
I’d be in the smile of a survivor
The tears of a lover
The hopes of a dreamer
Maybe even in the lies of a believer
Somewhere by the rattling earth
Or floating in the seven seas
But I’ll be where love goes
When you’ll be looking for me
So if you ever try to find me
I’ll be in the places you’ll never see
The places where your eyes will miss
But your heart will be set free
I’ll be in your laugh
Or maybe in your dreams
Where ever I am just know
Somewhere in the hollow shadows
I’m waiting to be seen
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 9:07 PM UTC
Rust downing like bayed menstrual blood--
booming steel walls...a rattling sanitation truck.
Housewarming...'the rough beast' in
fetal orbit...nay-toothed in squalor.
Whose gummy roar shall presage the
audacity of all places, that call forth
houses!!!
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
I am in levels. Past levels. This deep, intrinsic wonderful lost, the lawlessness of its fascinating expenditure of excite. Pushing through the wild and feral snow-dusted plains and timber ridges. Like red-spotted dots breathing through the cylinders called the spine. This descends into a narrow channel of scantly clad greenish scenery in a time-soaked visionary wilderness of snow,
Our crab legs dancing down wiry purple highways, our heads could not even look backwards if we had wanted.
Furious, love-latitudes, stalking breaths thwacking fork-ended tongues into a pinkish knot buried into the first layer of organic membrane on this railway of miniature canals, showing. And their pride snuck into the elbows, shooting down each vertebrae as it stepped with great precision every ledge that the currency emphasized. The raw accumulation of stolen heart-beats rattling between the interstices of new fuel careering these red engines. Crashing with exquisite pleasure into one another.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:41 AM UTC
in the year 2462 those with nails protruding from their palms
will talk in ancient tongues
& sway the tribes of men to eternal love,
& endless ammunition
of the soul.
spiritus.
kin, galactic
& the golden fire.
throb the saga of man,
into hip ****** illusions and combustive color schematas.
we bury our dead in flower clippings
or skull bits.
[skateboarding rises as the highest form of intellectual sport]
thrum and plum-bum the sewers of electric babylon.
hive city reaching past gasp and wasteland,
her lips ruinous.
cement slabs and coils of fault with
vast artistic possibilities.
these skate-lords from their heaps, their clans, augmenting
& rattling bone masks
grinding themselves into meat-bit heroics
& death.
their teeth are yellowy awoken.
this is all seen globally,
via tele-cast-com-core-mind-warp-tech.
or video.
dreams impact reality
impact dreams
in such
that the cathode cortex filter, invented circa 2222,
evolves into a demi-god, a solar charged demon of unlimited knowledge.
& it mutates the psychosphere of our mainstream public mind
with countless projected memories.
[streamed alternate realities]
fills the belly and the brain,
but all those unhooked are skating.
sweet meat market.
ghost harddrives.
poor leftovers called children of the once-was-men
& their poolside parties.
they leap the rubble of centuries old plastic icons,
their boards, their weapons, their seeds and spit.
they hang chains from their necks
& spew black flame from their sunshaded boot-click
lickings.
they drink from large bottlesof elixer distilled
on old flowers
& worship archaic cassettes.
cults of cyborg women with gem-tipped-blade-additions
carve wooden planks from
groves of great oaks.
great oaken powers.
their creators chew gummies and bend time
to uphold
a proposed history of perfection.
they master pong from their crystalline towers,
& hire mathematicians to write
conceptual skate-deck algorithms,
solely for fun.
non-profit.
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 5:49 AM UTC
She tells me the story of a conversation she had with her boyfriend
She says "I think a baby should have its dad
And not just some of the time"
And her voice is steady
but I can feel her heart rattling in its cage
Her lungs rippling with muscle-memory from childhood tears
She is painting a picture of a life using colours missing from her own
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 3:03 PM UTC
00:31 and it's been about an hour since i saw you'd removed the word "happiness" from your caption
and ever since then it's been all i can do to
overthink; it's all i can ever do
wondering if, maybe, just maybe, you'd finally seen what i see
how i am not good enough for you
i lose myself inside these thoughts at night when loneliness is my only company
and darkness is my only right hand man, doing me no wrong
i think about the times i've held your hand and then suddenly
he hugs me tighter than anybody ever has, darkness, that old friend of
mine - something which you are yet to be... hopefully
i'd be yours, too, if you'd have me
but i'm overthinking again, just always overthinking
you said you needed time before we could begin now i'm starting to think we never will
i get the need for space, i really do
i'm just so insecure i feel like i'll be replaced by you
baby
you give me panic attacks
and i think about you, your smile, your laugh
how you removed "happiness" from your caption on that photo of us
and now i'm wondering if i was the one that did it somehow, thinking maybe i ****** up already
how is it that we're not even together and i can already feel myself rattling
my nerves responding to a break-up that hasn't even happened
i guess that's just part of how broken i really am
i closed my eyes and let my head hit the pillow three hours ago
how is it that i'm more wide awake now than i was then?
all i want to do is sleep yet here i am
my mind a merciless prison - i tell you: thinking murders me
i'm begging you to figure yourself out before my paranoid anxiety does it for you
please
i'm such an impatient man
patience is a virtue, they say, and i guess i have neither
patience nor virtue
just another of the many ways that
i'm not good enough
for you.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 7:49 PM UTC
I reminisce by this railway siding pond,
Musing on rail relics rattling on,
Recalling lives and times bygone,
But memories of their shades linger on,
The lonesome call of distant steam trains,
Eras that may never come again,
I see they're gone nowhere in particular,
Replaced by planes and transport vehicular,
I imagine queues on foggy platforms,
Awaiting the misted trains' shadow forms,
Standing by, expecting the status quo,
I blink my eyes, where did they all go?
Looking backwards along yesterday's track,
I'm no kid any more, get off my back,
I reflect and reminisce,
Nostalgia is for the times we miss,
I'll reminisce by the railway siding pond,
I recall the times and lives bygone,
As ghosts of rail relics keep rattling on......
Jul 24, 2015
Jul 24, 2015 at 8:53 PM UTC
Snarling, fangs shining, moonlight illuminating ferocious beasts,
limbs tangling, separating, lunging, caught within deadly battle.
Scarlet streams trickle from trees gouged like the bellies of their prey,
canine fiends bare their teeth, their growls like black thunder,
facing these soulless demons smeared with the blood of many.
Bodies drop with screams still rattling inside their rib cages,
demons devouring with rage that can never be quenched,
their hearts ripped from their chests, veins slit,
arteries torn mercilessly out of still warm flesh.
Creatures created from pure insanity that breed nothing but anger,
fear and despair, children's corpses torn apart, their skulls shattered.
Snapping of jaws still slimed with internal juices,
bits of raw flesh clinging to hair that shimmers under the blood red moon.
Hissing from the shadows, knotted into frenzied war,
animated corpses beside twisted bodies of wolves,
wounds gushing ruby tears, still pulsing organs shredded.
Flames rush from overturned fires,
shrieking forms, torches wavering through darkness.
Pale beings gather for the finale,
blood spatters across ground, staining everything within it's reach.
Only two are left, facing each other in the coming dawn.
Heaps of creatures litter this burned, bloodied ground, none alive.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 5:05 AM UTC
To have them shipped across the sea,
sitting like ornamental drops
tinsel strung around your eyes
pocketed the tree
walking down sunset avenue
reeking of bamboo stalks and water chestnuts
looking for a place to submerge your treasure
with a rattling breath do you deflate
And the Oak trunk that grows unimpeded
hanging her branches
caressing the Spaniard shingles
the clay missionary tabs
touching the stucco with a golden blade
of sunlight
cutting a thousand little strips
to hang about the face
moving a thousand miles a second
stopped in place with the quiet repose
of a yoga state
humming and shimmering
yet let me be sweet oak tree.
And I wander through the canyon boulevard
between the rocky cliffs and the endless riff
of surf-rock echoed off skate parks
and riding the PC
highway hair bedraggled and snaked into next week
lingering bonfire on the cotton shirt
plant for plant
*** for tat
seed to breed
Now dance, you and me.
Insinuation
drooling salivary tongue full
bacon
pigging out on burgers
getting red-eyes from vegans
smoking plants
murderers
We squirt,
relish on the act of dying
all things dying
choking life second by second
dying to live.
Staring at neon fins lining the gravel lot
Koi flickering beneath the celestial night
Suspended pondwater
pondering
In surfce tension
the deep mysteries of life
Tracing the snake through the winding streams
we watch atop the rooftop
Gaia
Taking in the burgeoning
Ocean of incandescent tangerine
and Peyote-light
Cacti hidden somewhere between
the quiet slumber of mindless streets
aligned by formless hands
Drinking the mescaline
air
Twisting the nightly moments
as locks of hair
I curled them, slipping, within my fingertips
tracing the long winding road of Tao
along her shoulders
Enraptured by her sensual bliss
When I finally drifted along the clouded memories
of divine rumbling eyes
she disappeared into the sky
blinking along the Jet turbines
Never meant to be mine
for more than a night
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 12:25 AM UTC
long ago,
I could tame a lion with the click of a pen,
watch the teeth burn to ashes in his jaw,
and his gums bleed, dripping with every word.
drip, drop.
funny how lions are a symbol of God.
funny how, I used to glance into the
cold black irises of my strongest demon,
and tell myself I loved him.
every boy I've ever written for
seems to vanish before the novel ends,
before the sun sets, before they think-
maybe,
"it's safe to leave her before she falls in love"
little do they know that love was my oxygen,
love was my unused journal
from a lost friend,
love was nothing until I met you.
you cannot be another night
without razor sharp stars in the sky.
you cannot be the hundreds of songs
I can no longer ******* listen to.
you cannot be another Willow Springs-
another road I think I've traveled,
I've seen children pray on the corners of Italy;
I've seen mountains breathe
and thought it would be my last time
kissing their snowy tops.
I've seen straight into the
amber eyes of the lion
as I lay under fluorescent lights
with sixteen pills rattling in my stomach,
thinking maybe,
the King of the Jungle will release me
with His jaws of life.
but the truth is,
you are the only god I believe in.
you are my savior,
you are the King of the Jungle
and the closest thing to heaven
I will ever know.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 1:35 AM UTC